Supporters of Five Points Gallery raised $275,000 in just one afternoon to meet the deadline to make an offer to purchase the University of Connecticut Torrington Campus, officials said.

The university’s board of trustees unanimously approved the sale to the gallery in a special meeting Monday for the offer amount, a total of $375,000.

“They lined up private contributors, it bespeaks the esteem in what they’re doing. They have $1.5 million now,” said attorney Richard Orr, who is special counsel for the university and oversaw the process.

The gallery will have 10 years to pay the balance of the purchase of $100,000, of the total price of $375,000, according to the university.

Gallery Executive Director Judy McElhone said before the meeting that “Torrington is a city of makers. I grew up in Torrington and my dad worked at a factory. (Manufacturers) supplied products during World War I and World War II.”

“Now we’ll be makers of art,” McElhone noted.

The amenities proposed by the gallery for the Torrington campus include a “multifaceted complex,” McElhone has said, to provide working studios for sculpture, printmaking and ceramics, among other visual art forms.

“It would be our northern site (for the existing gallery) with a “Think Tank Laboratory” for established artists and interns,” she said. In addition, a cafe, artists’ residences and outdoor classrooms for children would be built, McElhone has said.

“They will take good care of the property. We were motivated sellers and they were motivated buyers,” said Scott Jordan, the university’s chief financial officer after the vote.

It took two years to find a buyer for the 85-acre property, according to a statement from the university. The first bid, in 2017, for $250,000 came from the 22-region EdAdvance consortium, which wanted to buy the property.

When EdAdvance learned how much it would cost to retrofit a classroom building with fire sprinklers, Jordan said, they decided it was too expensive to buy the parcel. The consortium, however, was interested in leasing the property, documents show.

When the board agreed to lease the land, Orr said, it released a “request for letters of interest” from other groups, rather than just considering EdAdvance’s proposal.

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That was in April. McElhone said they learned of the opportunity in May, just before the deadline.

“This is huge for Torrington” she said on Monday. “This will put Torrington on the map.”

“The opportunity for job growth, increased tourism, and the economic benefit to local towns is extremely exciting and I’m proud to support Five Points Gallery in their endeavor” state Sen. Kevin Witkos, R-Canton, wrote in a statement after the sale was approved.

The gallery “expects to generate approximately 8new full-time positions and employ 20 part-time teachers and support staff when the project is fully developed,” Witkos wrote.

The land on which the campus sits was a gift to the city in 1960 from the estate of Julia Booker Thompson, Mayor Elinor Carbone noted at the November council meeting. Thompson specified that the land must be used for educational purposes, records show.

Under terms of the sale, agreed to on Monday, the university would “sell to Five Points the approximately 5 acres of the core campus including the M. Adela Eads Classroom Building, a maintenance garage and the Litchfield County Extension Center building.”

The entire 85 acres would be transferred to Five Points Gallery from the university. The gallery would then return the land to the city, according to the statement, and the gallery would build, maintain and operate the arts center as a nonprofit business.

A key piece of campus property not being leased or sold, is a sculpture created in 1982 by the late artist Alexander Lieberman. It was a gift for the Torrington campus, apparently from one of the artist’s assistants.

The university will move the large metal sculpture to the Storrs campus, probably in the spring, Orr said. In the board meeting, he noted, “I’m not going to give away (a very valuable sculpture) for a $375,000 sale.”

The funds from the sale of the property will be used by the university, Orr said, to create a scholarship for students from Torrington or the vicinity, to attend UConn.

One more step is required before the sale is completely finalized. The transaction must be approved in Superior Court in Torrington, Orr said. “We’re a public entity, so we can’t give property away,” he said.

A judge must rule that the transfer of land to the gallery and the city is legal, Orr added.